Racial discrimination was legal: as we have seen, in addition to private clubs that were open only to whites, many British hotels and other establishments sported signs saying ‘Indians and dogs not allowed’. (It was the experience of being expelled from one of them, Watson’s Hotel in Bombay, that led Jamsetji Tata to build one of the world’s finest and most opulent hotels of its time, the Taj Mahal, which was open to Indians.)
